STORY - "Beyond the tinsel"
By Edmond Nixon CSsR

Aurora invited Fr Edmond Nixon CSsR to reflect on the approaching feast of Christmas.

Chocolate frogs may grab children’s attention at the supermarket check-out, but it’s the magazines that attract the adults. Not just any kind of magazine, mind you. Checkout mags invariably have celebrities on their covers and celebrities inside. Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise engaged, one will scream. Another will feature Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner getting together. Then there’ll be news of the Beckhams’ latest travels. And part of it all is to tell us about popular people’s childhoods.

In the same supermarket, even on a crowded Saturday morning, there probably won’t be another person there of whose childhood we know anything. At home too, surrounded by photos of childhood, many of the stories still fade. Adulthood ultimately captures our focus. Not so for the celebrities! Those magazines are full of details about celebrities and their childhoods.

There’ll be a picture of John Cleese on a fishing trip aged 6, or Naomi Campbell dancing at Sunday school, aged 4. Throughout history people have wanted to know about “the beginnings” of famous or significant people. Ordinary people remember few, if any, details about their “beginnings” and even when they do, who is interested? In spite of all the photos, videos, school prizes and medical records in today’s world, virtually no one outside the family knows anything about our “beginnings”.

But we expect to know about the “beginnings” of the famous. It is in this context, scholars tell us, that we can best understand the infancy stories about Jesus that occur in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. Both Matthew and Luke tell us about Jesus’ “beginnings”, not because he was a celebrity but because, for those first believers, he was significant.

He is significant for us too, and through faith we believe he is significant for the world. We expect, therefore, to know about his “beginnings” in a way that announces the significance of his adult life, his death and resurrection.

Scholars confirm that Jesus was born into a Galilean family somewhere between 7-4 BCE. As peasants, they melted seamlessly into the ordinariness of the populace under the heavy foot of their then Roman occupiers. The earliest gospel, Mark’s, was written about the year 70 CE, some forty years after the death of Jesus. Matthew and Luke were written around 85 CE, and John, around 90 CE. By this time it is almost inconceivable that any details remained of Jesus’ early life.

But this does not have to spoil the familiar story. Matthew and Luke, writing about Jesus’ beginnings, may not be writing fact, but that does not mean that what they write is untrue. Look at it this way: if I were to greet a person one day and tell them that the sun shines out of their face, they’d be foolish to take my compliment literally as fact. The sun does not actually shine out of their face. But such a person might be equally foolish not to accept the inherent truth in what I’m saying, for the sun shining out of your face is a metaphor designed to highlight how cheerful and beautiful they are.

When Matthew and Luke tell us about the “infancy” of Jesus, they are not so much giving us facts about baby Jesus, but telling us of his significance for the world, telling us the truth about him. For example, in Luke’s gospel, who are the first to recognise the Saviour after his birth? It is the shepherds. This is Luke’s way of saying to us: “Friends, if you want to understand where this gospel is going, get this point clear from the start: Jesus came to all humanity, but he especially came to little ones, and it was the little ones who first recognised him.” Even among the peasants, the shepherds were at the bottom of the heap!

Luke tells us how these little ones found favour with God and with his Son, Jesus Christ. “The glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:9b). Luke goes on to say, “Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy to be shared by all the people. Today, in the town of David, a Saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

This Christmas, look into the crib and understand the place of the shepherds. The broken ones, the powerless, the little ones knowing their Saviour had come. Show the children the shepherds. Tell them why the shepherds were the first to know the significance of Jesus. And recall also these last twelve months. Where appropriate, share these memories with the children.

Remember the broken ones of the Boxing Day tsunami, the old and feeble left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the tormented ones from the Kashmir earthquake, the women, men and children caught in the fury of terrorism, domestic violence, playground violence and racial exclusion.

These, dear friends, are today’s little ones. We are part of them. For we, too, are broken, poor in one way or another, and often fearful of the fullness of life. Yet this is our point of entry into Christ, just as it was for the shepherds. Look into the crib, see the shepherds, and realise God’s ways among us.

Might this then be our Christmas prayer? O God of the poor, the ridiculed and the forgotten, see justice done for all peoples. Over the coming year, may your church find Christ among the poor, the broken and the fragile. Come, Lord Jesus!

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